Edward Feser's Blog, page 68

Mark Shea’s misrepresentation of Catholic teaching on capital punishment

Among the outrageous calumnies that Mark Shea has flung at my co-author Joe Bessette and I is the accusation that we are “dissenters” from binding Catholic doctrine, on all fours with Catholics who dissent from Church teaching on abortion and euthanasia.  He mocks Catholics who oppose the latter but not capital punishment, accusing them of inconsistency and bad faith.  In his unhinged recent Facebook rant he repeatedly asserts that Joe and I “reject the teaching of the Magisterium,” that we “argue that the Magisterium is wrong,” that we are in the business of “fighting,” “ignoring,” “battling,” and “rebutting” the Magisterium.For Catholics like Joe and I who are in fact intent precisely on upholding and following the binding teaching of the Magisterium – which, as we are well aware, includes more than just those doctrines taught infallibly – these are fighting words.  They are also inconsistent with what the Church actually teaches about the duty of Catholics vis-à-vis capital punishment.  It is Shea, and not Joe and I, who is out of step with the Church.  Shea has every right to oppose capital punishment and to urge his fellow Catholics to do likewise.  But he has no right to accuse those who disagree with him of being “dissenters,” for the Church herself allows Catholics freely to debate and disagree about this particular issue.  Joe and I demonstrate this conclusively in our forthcoming book.  Among the evidence for this claim – by no means the only evidence, but certainly decisive pieces of evidence – are some clarifications issued just over a decade ago by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Archbishop William Levada.

I have cited these texts several times now in my exchanges with Shea.  He has repeatedly ignored them.  A reader of Shea’s who has been engaging him at his Facebook page has asked Shea to respond to the Ratzinger and Levada texts.  While Shea has responded to this reader’s other queries, he is curiously silent about this one.  The reason is obvious.  Shea does not answer because he cannot.  Let’s take a look at these texts and see what Shea is so afraid of.
In 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger, writing in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, produced a memorandum titled “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles.”  The memo was written in an election year during which there was much discussion about whether Catholic politicians who support abortion ought to be denied Holy Communion, whether Catholics who support capital punishment or the Iraq war were also to be counted as dissenters from Church teaching, etc.  Ratzinger’s aim was to clarify precisely what the Church requires of Catholics vis-à-vis these “hot button” issues.  As the Church’s chief doctrinal officer – who had the full confidence of Pope John Paul II and was later to become pope himself – Ratzinger was in the ideal position to know and had authority to pronounce on the matter.  Here is what he said:
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.  While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia…
Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.
End quote.  Now, Ratzinger makes several points in this passage, and they are all devastating to Shea’s position.  First, and contrary to Shea’s charge of inconsistency and bad faith, Ratzinger says that capital punishment is not to be lumped in with abortion and euthanasia.  How great is the difference?  This great: You can be barred from Holy Communion for supporting abortion and euthanasia, but not for supporting capital punishment.  Indeed, a Catholic could even be “at odds with” the pope on the subject of capital punishment – pretty strong language – and still be worthy to receive Holy Communion, whereas dissent from papal teaching on abortion and euthanasia is disqualifying and absolutely impermissible. 
Now, Ratzinger could not have said this if it were mortally sinful to disagree with papal opposition to capital punishment.  And he could not have said that disagreement is “legitimate” if it were even venially sinful to disagree, since even venial sin cannot be “legitimate.”  The only possible conclusion that can be drawn from this is that Catholics owe the pope’s opposition to capital punishment only respectful consideration, not assent.  It could not be clearer that there is no inconsistency whatsoever in the thinking of Catholics who oppose abortion and euthanasia but not capital punishment, and that Catholics have the right to support the latter.
Also in 2004, Archbishop Levada – who would later succeed Ratzinger as head of the CDF – issued a document titled “Theological Reflections on Catholics in Political Life and the Reception of Holy Communion.”  It had the same aim as Cardinal Ratzinger’s memo, and (as you will see if you click on the link) it can be found at the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in the section of the website devoted to setting out what the Church requires of Catholics vis-à-vis political matters.  Here is what the archbishop wrote, in language that partially parallels Ratzinger’s:
Catholic social teaching covers a broad range of important issues.  But among these the teaching on abortion holds a unique place.  Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to disagree with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not with regard to abortion and euthanasia…
A Catholic, to be in full communion with the faith of the Church, must accept this teaching about the evil of abortion and euthanasia…
[T]he fear that saying nothing in the face of a long-term public refusal to adhere to the teachings of Christ proclaimed by his Church would convince a bishop that, in order to avoid scandal - positions of Catholic politicians that might lead members of his flock into similar patterns of sinful behavior - he must publicly reprove the person who persists in such behavior by imposing a penalty such as the prohibition to receive Holy Communion. Canon 915 says that those "who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion”…
In the case of persons who do not accept some teaching of the faith that has been definitively (infallibly) taught… their rejection of such a truth (e.g. the evil of abortion) would affect and diminish their full communion with the faith and life of the Church.
End quote.  Note that Levada repeats Ratzinger’s point that Catholics can “disagree” with the pope on the subject of capital punishment, that there can be a “legitimate diversity of opinion” on this matter but not on abortion and euthanasia, and that disagreement on the latter but not the former can lead to being barred from Holy Communion.  He also adds the point that agreement with papal teaching on the subjects of abortion and euthanasia (unlike agreement on the subject of capital punishment) is a condition for being in “full communion” with the Church.  It is clear, then, that disagreement on the subject of capital punishment does not constitute a refusal of submission to binding teaching.
So, we have official acknowledgement both from the Vatican and from the USCCB that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about… applying the death penalty.”  Hence Joe and I are simply exercising the liberty with respect to this subject which the Church herself has acknowledged Catholics have. 
Again, I have now cited these texts several times in my exchanges with Shea.  He cannot be ignorant of their existence.  So when Shea labels Joe and I “dissenters” from binding Catholic teaching, he is either lying or is so psychologically unbalanced that he is incapable of processing evidence that refutes his assertions.  He is, in any event, guilty of slander, of acting contrary to justice and charity, and – as a perusal of his Facebook discussion thread shows – of stirring up hatred and division among Catholics.

A low down dirty Shea

Not too long ago, Catholic writer Mark Shea and I had an exchange on the subject of capital punishment.  See this post, this one, and this one for my side of the exchange and for links to Shea’s side of it.  A friend emails to alert me that Shea has now made some remarks at Facebook about the forthcoming book on the subject that I have co-authored with Joe Bessette.  “Deranged” might seem an unkind description of Shea and his comments.  Sadly, it’s also a perfectly accurate description.  Here’s a sample:
Yes. This needs to be the #1 priority for conservative Christian “prolife” people to focus on: battling the Church for the right of a post-Christian state to join Communist and Bronze Age Islamic states in killing as many people as possible, even if 4% of them are completely innocent. Cuz, you know, stopping euthanasia is, like, a super duper core non-negotiable and stuff.  What a wise thing for “prolife” Christians to commit their time and energy to doing instead of defending the unborn or the teaching of the Magisterium. How prudent. How merciful. This and kicking 24 million people off health care are *clearly* what truly “prolife” Christians should be devoted to, in defiance of the Magisterium.  Good call!“Prudential judgment” is right wing speak for “Ignore the Church and listen to right wing culture of death rhetoric”.

This book will be the Real Magisterium, henceforth, for all members of the Right Wing Culture of Death on this subject. It's judgments, not that of the Magisterium, will be final and authoritative for the “prolife” supporter of the Right Wing Culture of Death.
It will do nothing but foster right wing dissent. It will be the New Magisterium for the entire right wing and give oxygen to the War on Francis.
The Right anoints a Folk Hero antipope who tells it it's okay to reject the obvious teaching of the Church and do whatever they want and then the cry “Prudential judgment!” goes up.
Etc.  End quote.
No comment is really necessary.  Still, I can’t help calling attention to a few points:
First, the book has not come out yet, so Shea hasn’t even read it.  His attack is thus aimed at a fantasy target rather than at our actual claims and arguments.  In fact, all of the concerns Shea might have about our position are answered at length and in detail in the book, and in a scholarly and non-polemical fashion.  Hence Shea’s remarks are – to say the very least – ill-informed and unjustifiably vituperative. 
Second, the few substantive assertions Shea makes here – and note that they are mere assertions, completely unbacked by any argumentation or evidence – have already been answered in my earlier exchange with him.  For example, in the initial response to Shea I posted during that exchange, I noted that Shea’s claim that “4% of [those executed] are completely innocent” misrepresents the authors of the study from which Shea derives this claim.  I also there noted the problems with Shea’s use of the term “prolife,” which is merely a political slogan deriving from contemporary American politics and has no theological significance.
As to the bogus charge of “dissent,” in my second post in our earlier exchange, I quoted statements from Cardinal Ratzinger (then head of the CDF and the Church’s chief doctrinal officer) and Archbishop Levada (then writing in a USCCB document, and later to take over from Ratzinger as head of CDF) which explicitly affirmthat faithful Catholics are at liberty to take different positions regarding capital punishment and even to disagree with the Holy Father on that particular issue.  Both Ratzinger and Levada in these documents also explicitly assert that abortion and euthanasia – which, unlike capital punishment, are intrinsically evil – have a greater moral significance than capital punishment.  Hence, when Shea mocks Catholics who are strongly opposed to abortion and euthanasia but who do not share his views about capital punishment, he is implicitly mocking Ratzinger and Levada – who, unlike Shea, actually have authorityto state what is and is not binding Catholic teaching. 
Shea has, in several follow-ups now, given no response whatsoever to these points or others made in my earlier posts.  He simply ignores the arguments and instead reiterates, with greater shrillness, the same false and already refuted claims he made in his initial attack on Joe and me.
Third, the charge that Joe and I are motivated by a desire to justify “killing as many people as possible” is not only false and groundless, but a truly outrageous calumny.  Shea made this charge in our original exchange, and (as I noted in my second post in that exchange) when I complained about it he seemed to back away from it.  Now he is back to tossing this smear at us.
Fourth, if Shea insists on flinging calumnies like these, he ought to consider just how many people he is implicitly targeting.  On my personal web page I have posted the endorsements given our book by J. Budziszewski, Fr. James Schall, Robert Royal, Fr. Robert Sirico, Edward Peters, Fr. Kevin Flannery, Steven A. Long, Fr. George Rutler, Fr. Gerald Murray, Barry Latzer, Michael Pakaluk, and Fr. Thomas Petri.  This list includes some very prominent faithful Catholics and respected scholars, representing fields such as moral theology, canon law, philosophy, and criminal justice.  And unlike Shea, they have actually seen the book.  It is worth noting that Fr. Sirico, who happens to be opposed to capital punishment, does not even agree with our conclusions.  He graciously endorsed our book anyway simply because he regards it as a worthy and serious defense of the other side, which opponents of capital punishment can profit from engaging with. 
Now, I imagine that Shea knows and respects many of these people.  Of course, they could be wrong, and the fact that they endorse our book doesn’t mean we are right.  But would Shea go so far as to label all of these people “dissenters,” or proponents of a “culture of death” who want to “kill as many people as possible,” etc.?  If not, then perhaps he will reconsider his rhetorical excesses. 
Fifth, the out-of-left-field stuff in Shea’s remarks about “kicking 24 million people off health care,” “the War on Francis,” etc. have, of course, absolutely nothing to do with the argument of our book.  Shea made similarly irrelevant remarks in our earlier exchange.  His seeming inability to refrain from dragging in his personal political obsessions shows just how very unhinged he is.  It also manifests his lack of self-awareness.  Shea accuses fellow Catholics who disagree with him about capital punishment of being blinded by their political biases – while in the very same breath bizarrely insinuating that our support for capital punishment somehow has something to do with President Trump’s health care bill (!) 
Sixth, Shea’s political obsessions blind him to other and more important aspects of the debate over capital punishment, in ways I have already explained in my earlier posts – where, here again, Shea simply ignores rather than responds to what I wrote.  For example, Shea appears not to realize that there is a very influential strain of thought within otherwise theologically conservative Catholic circles – namely, the so-called “new natural law” school of thought – which takes a far more radically abolitionist position than even he would.  Shea has repeatedly acknowledged in the past that capital punishment is not always and intrinsically immoral and that the Church cannot teach that it is.  But the “new natural lawyers” maintain that capital punishment is always and intrinsically wrong, and they would like the Church to reversetwo millennia of teaching on this point – indeed, to reverse the consistent teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the popes.
One of the main motivations for writing our book was to rebut this extreme position, which has very dangerous theological implications that extend well beyond the capital punishment debate.  Indeed, our primary concern in the book is to demonstrate the continuity of Catholic teaching and rebut any suggestion that the Church has contradicted herself, with advocacy of capital punishment in practice being a merely secondary concern.  Among the many novel things the reader will find in our book is a far more detailed and systematic response to the extreme “new natural law” position on capital punishment than has yet appeared. 
Since Shea too rejects the extreme “always and intrinsically wrong” position vis-à-vis capital punishment, one would think he would see the importance of rebutting it.  Unfortunately, in his apparent desire to fold every Catholic theological dispute into his obsession with current American electoral politics, Shea seems unable to understand that some of us have much larger and less ephemeral concerns in view. 
Seventh and finally, judging from remarks he made in our earlier exchange, Shea appears to think that, even if a Catholic might in theorysupport capital punishment, in practicethe downside of doing so is so great that his vituperative treatment of supporters is justified.  I have already explained in the earlier posts why this is a mistake, but there is a further point to be made.  What Shea does not consider is that, whatever good he thinks he is doing, there is also a very grave downside to his own abusive methods.  Even if Shea is correct that someCatholic supporters of capital punishment are acting in bad faith, there are very many who are not – people who sincerely believe that they are within their rights as Catholics in supporting capital punishment, and who put forward arguments for that conclusion in a sober and non-polemical way.
If Shea is going to convince these people that they are wrong, then he can do so only by actually answering their arguments and not by merely repetitively flinging insults at them.  Shea only does his own side harm in behaving the way he does, confirming in the minds of his opponents the judgment that the anti-capital punishment side has no rational basis but is grounded in emotion and demagoguery.  He also acts gravely contrary to justice and charity.
In this connection it is worthwhile emphasizing that Shea made his reputation – or what’s left of it at this point, anyway – as a Catholic apologist.  Now, apologeticsis of its nature a rationalenterprise aimed at persuading those who do not already agree by means of sober argumentation.  And Catholic apologetics has always been guided by the principle of meeting one’s interlocutors where they are, charitably finding whatever is of value in their position and using it as a basis for discussion, etc.
Shea seems in the last few years increasingly to have abandoned these ideals.  He shows little interest in persuading anyone or in giving arguments.  In blog post after blog post he tosses out strings of ungrounded assertions, attacks caricatures, hurls insults and abuse, seems content with the “high fives” his more rabid fans give back in response, and offers further abuse and mockery in response to critics who try to engage him substantively.  I have had reason over the years to note how “New Atheist” writers and their own fan base routinely attack books and arguments which they admit they have not read, and ritualistically attack a set of phantom opponents who exist only in their imaginations and bear little resemblance to any real world adversaries.  It is striking how closely Shea and his fan base resemble these people, in style, ethos, and method, even if not in content. 

Meta-bigotry

Sophistry is the attempt to persuade someone of some proposition or policy by the use of fallacious arguments.  What I have called meta-sophistry involves accusing others of fallacies or of sophistry in a manner that is itself fallacious or sophistical.  The meta-sophist cynically deploys labels like “sophist” as a rhetorical device by which he might smear and discredit an opponent.  Where the opponent’s arguments can easily be read in a way that involves no commission of fallacies, the meta-sophist will instead opt for a less charitable reading so as to facilitate the accusation that the opponent is a sophist.  Because the meta-sophist poses precisely as a foeof sophistry and fallacious argument and as a friend of reason, his brand of sophistry is especially insidious.  He is like the politician who makes the loud condemnation of sleazy politicians a useful cover for his own sleaziness.  (As I have documented many times over the years – e.g. here, here, and here – “New Atheist” writers are paradigmatic meta-sophists.)A close kin to meta-sophistry is what I call meta-bigotry.  This is the deployment of epithets like “bigot” in a manner that is itselfbigoted.  We have seen some vivid examples recently, such as in the unhinged reaction of certain academic philosophersto Richard Swinburne’s controversial SCP talk, and in the mob that shut down Charles Murray’s lecture at Middlebury College.  Indeed, so manifestly bigoted are these purported anti-bigots – so obviously moved are they by unreasoning hatred and malice rather than by calm and dispassionate argument – that it is astonishing that they could claim with a straight face to be anything other than bigots themselves.  How have we come to this?

What bigotry is and what it isn’t
The answer is in part that a great many people seem to have forgotten what bigotry actually is and exactly why it is objectionable.  John Knasas, in the course of a discussion on a completely unrelated subject, happens to give in passing a pretty good characterization of bigotry:
[B]iases and prejudices can determine how things come across.  In the light of racial prejudice, white bigots are unable to appreciate something done by a black person in good faith.  A smile, a courtesy, will be taken as a setup, unemployment as indicative of lazy character, employment as indicative of another white person’s mercy rather than the black person’s merit, and so on.  The bigot constantly interprets what is given in the light of preconceptions.  (Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, p. 115)
Oxford defines a bigot as “a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions.”  Merriam-Webstertells us that a bigot is “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” 
These characterizations of bigotry are by no means eccentric or partisan.  They reflect longstanding English usage of the term.  Now, notice that on all of them, the nature and problematic status of bigotry are essentially procedural rather than substantive.  That is to say, they have to do, not with the content of the bigot’s beliefs, but with the manner in which he holds them.  The bigot is someone whose attachment to his beliefs is fundamentally emotional rather than rational.  He evaluates the evidence in light of his beliefs rather than evaluating his beliefs in light of the evidence.  He is reluctant or unwilling to give a fair hearing to opinions other than his own or to arguments against his own.  He tends to be hostile to those who hold those different opinions, prefers to avoid them altogether rather than engaging them and their views, and resorts to invective instead of reasoned debate.
The reason all of this is problematic, of course, is that bigotry gets in the way of our discovering truth.  If the bigot’s opinions are wrong, he is very unlikely to discover that they are, because he turns his mind violently away from all sources of information that might reveal his errors to him.  Even if he turns out to be right, that will be a matter of luck, for the manner in which he forms his opinions is so inherently unreliable that he is unlikely to be right very often or without a large admixture of error.
Now in light of these facts, it is obvious that thinkers like Swinburne and Murray are not bigots.  As those who know them or their work attest, they are both about as civilized, learned, and open to rational criticism and debate as a scholar can be.  Their manner of discourse is decidedly cerebral rather than emotive, and they are always giving arguments rather than issuing mere assertions.  Their opinions on this or that subject may or may not be wrong– that is an entirely different question – but there can be no reasonable doubt that they hold those opinions in a way that is not at all bigoted. 
By contrast, people like the foul-mouthed professors who had nothing but hatred and mockery to throw in Swinburne’s direction, and the students who violently disrupted Murray’s talk, are straight-from-central-casting bigots in the ordinary dictionary sense of the term.  They could not care less what Swinburne’s or Murray’s actual views or arguments are.  They “already know” they must be wrong.  Certainly they would never so much as entertain even the bare possibility that Swinburne or Murray might after all be right.  They responded to them precisely in terms of their own “preconceptions” (as Knasas puts it), “obstinately devoted” to their own liberal opinions (as Merriam-Websterputs it) and “intolerant” of conservative ones (as Oxford puts it).  Since they manifest this bigotry precisely under the guise of opposing bigotry, they are meta-bigots.
Now, what has facilitated this forgetting of what bigotry actually is is a simple though fairly widespread confusion – namely the confusion of what is merely in some cases one particular kind of bigotry with what all bigotry is per se. 
In particular, one kind of bigotry can involve negative opinions concerning some group of people – whether an ethnic group, adherents of a certain religion, adherents of a certain political party, or whatever.  But it would be a mistake to identifybigotry with such negative opinions.  For one thing, not all bigotry involves having negative opinions about some group of people.  For example, a person might take so negative an attitude about some set of ideas – Heideggerian existentialism, evolutionary biology, British idealism, or whatever – that he is unwilling to give it a fair hearing or to be shown that his objections to it are based on misconceptions.  Such a person would be a bigot, even though his bigotry isn’t directed toward some ethnic or religious group or the like.
For another thing, not all negative opinions concerning some group of people are bigoted.  Take, for example, the claims that bureaucrats often evade responsibility, businessmen are often too concerned with the bottom line, many lawyers are more interested in gaming the system than in securing justice, and so forth.  These are negative opinions concerning large groups of people, but someone could certainly hold them in a way that is not bigoted.  For example, someone could sincerely believe that there is good evidence for these propositions, could nevertheless be open to hearing arguments and evidence to the contrary, could be perfectly willing to acknowledge that bureaucrats, businessmen, lawyers, etc. have their good points too, and so on.  These opinions may or may not be mistaken, but the fact that they are about groups of people does not necessarily make them bigoted.  (Another obvious example would be the claim that bigots are irrational.  That’s a negative opinion about an entire group of people, but it is hardly itself bigoted!)
All the same, there is a common tendency today to suppose that any opinion concerning some group of people that is in some way negative is of its very nature bigoted – and indeed to suppose that that sort of thing is just what bigotry is.  Hence many people suppose that if someone says something concerning some group that is in some way negative, then that person simply must be a bigot – regardless of whether the person’s opinions are expressed dispassionately, whether he backs them up with arguments, is willing to listen to criticism of them, is happy to acknowledge that the group in question has good aspects too, etc.   And such people also suppose that since they personally repudiate the making of negative claims about any group, then they themselves cannot possiblybe bigots – regardless of how shrill they are in their purported anti-bigotry, of their refusal to back up their position with arguments or listen to the other side, of their demonization of those who disagree with them, etc.
The fallacy here is of the general form:
Many instances of X are Y and many instances of Y are X.  Therefore, something is X if and only if it is Y. 
An example of this fallacious reasoning would be:
Many instances of stealing involve taking a person’s money without his consent and many instances of taking a person’s money without his consent involve stealing.  Therefore, something is stealing if and only if it involves taking a person’s money without his consent.
The premise here is certainly true, but the conclusion does not follow, and indeed is false.  For stealing sometimes involves something other than taking a person’s money without his consent (e.g. it might involve taking other kinds of property, or it might involve getting a person to consent under false pretenses), and taking someone’s money without his consent is not always stealing (e.g. it may involve forcing him to pay a fine for violating some just law, or requiring him to pay justly levied taxes). 
Similarly, many people who think of themselves as opponents of bigotry seem to be reasoning as follows:
Many instances of bigotry involve having a negative opinion of some sort concerning some group of people, and many instances of having a negative opinion of some sort concerning some group of people involve bigotry.  Therefore, something is bigotry if and only if it involves having some sort of negative opinion concerning some group of people.
Here too, though, while the premise is true, the conclusion does not follow and is not true.  Again, it is possible to be a bigot even if one does not have a negative opinion of some sort concerning some group of people, and it is possible to have a negative opinion of some sort concerning some group of people and nevertheless not be a bigot.
Now the fallacy is compounded by the fact that what are sometimes characterized as negative opinions about groups of people are, strictly speaking, not really that at all.  For example, if someone thinks that a certain sexual practiceis immoral, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he has a negative attitude about the people who engage in that practice.  Everyone knows this where some sexual practices are concerned.  For example, if someone says “I think adultery is wrong,” few people would respond “Ah, so you hate people who commit adultery!”  However, if someone says “I think homosexual acts are wrong,” the response is often “You hate homosexuals!”  But that simply does not follow, any more than in the case of adultery.  The negative attitude in question is essentially about a certain kind of behavior, rather than about a certain group of people per se.
Similarly, if someone thinks that a certain religion has negative features, it doesn’t follow that he has a negative attitude about the adherents of the religion.  Everyone knows this where some religions are concerned.  For example, if someone says “I think Scientology has crazy doctrines and is cultish,” few people would respond “Ah, so you hate Scientologists!”  Or if someone says “I think the Amish way of life is much too restrictive and blinkered,” few would say “You hate Amish people!”  However, if someone says “I think Islam has a greater tendency to generate terrorism than other religions do,” the response is often “You hate Muslims!”  But that simply does not follow, any more than in the case of Scientologists or Amish people.  The negative attitude in question is essentially about a certain set of religious ideas, rather than about the group of people who hold those ideas.
This reinforces the point that opinions to the effect that such-and-such a sexual practice is wrong, that this or that religion has negative features, or what have you, are simply not per se bigoted.  Such opinions could be held in a bigoted way, of course, and indeed sometimes are.  But that is true of any opinion on any subject – including more favorableopinions on the sexual practice, religion, etc. in question.  Again, bigotry has essentially to do with the manner in which one holds an opinion, not the content of the opinion. 
Note that this does not entail that just any old content is reasonable or otherwise unobjectionable so long as it is not held in a bigoted way.  Lots of people have crazy beliefs that they cling to tenaciously but in a way that is nevertheless not bigoted.  They may be perfectly willing to hear counterevidence and criticism, are not emotional about the subject or contemptuous of people who disagree, etc. but nevertheless can’t be talked out of their odd views.  In my view, lots of people who firmly believe certain kinds of conspiracy theories, or who are fascinated with UFOs or other odd phenomena, or who swear by various quack medical theories, etc. are like this.  There may be irrationality here, but not necessarily bigotry.  To call someone a bigot implies a certain kind of moralfailing that is simply not justly attributed to people who are merely eccentric or confused. 
Meta-bigotry as a tactic
So, accusations of bigotry are often based on misunderstandings of what bigotry is or are otherwise fallacious.  Are these errors the result of honest mistakes?  No doubt in some cases they are.  But by no means in all cases.  For the accusation of bigotry has in recent decades become a kind of rhetorical tactic among many egalitarians.  Indeed, in some cases the tactic is deliberately adopted rather than merely a tic that the egalitarian unthinkingly falls into.  The intention is to demonize critics of egalitarian policy, so as to intimidate such critics into silence and to discourage third parties from hearing out any criticisms they do express.  The aim is precisely to bypass rational discourse and instead to alter opinions at an emotional level.  In my initial post on the Swinburne SCP controversy I quoted extensively from some activists who frankly admit that this is what they are up to.
Now, a more blatant example of sophistry and bigotry cannot be imagined.  Because this tactic is deployed in the name of opposing bigotry and illogical thinking, it is a textbook instance of meta-sophistry and meta-bigotry.  Meta-bigotry is an especially insidious form of bigotry precisely because it presents itself as opposition to bigotry.  The meta-bigot is less likely than other bigots are to perceive his own bigotry.  He thinks: “But I’m so passionately opposed to bigotry!  How could I possibly be a bigot?”  (The answer is: Try dialing down the passion, and maybe you’ll see.)
The Murray incident is just the latest indicator of how pervasive meta-bigotry has become on college campuses.  The Swinburne affair is just the latest indicator of the inroads it has made even into academic philosophy.  A sizable chunk of the modern academy has become a kind of Bizarro world, in which shrill fanatics like the Middlebury mob and Swinburne’s critics are regarded as the reasonable and open-minded people, and sober scholars like Swinburne and Murray are treated as if they were shrill fanatics.  It does not seem to be an exaggeration to say that in the contemporary academic context, the people routinely labeled “bigots” usually are not really bigots (whether or not they are in error in other ways), and the people most keen to fling the “bigot” label at others usually are bigots (namely, meta-bigots).
But then, as Plato warned us, egalitarianism has always tended in this irrationalist direction.  It was, after all, the passionately egalitarian Athenians who executed the anti-egalitarian Socrates.  Swinburne and Murray are in good company.

Get linked

At The New York Review of Books, Thomas Nagel reviews Daniel Dennett’s new book From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds.
Charles Murray versus the campus brownshirts: His personal account of the Two Hours Hate at Middlebury.  Commentary from Noah Millman at The Week, Ronald Radosh at The Daily Beast, Peter Beinart at The Atlantic, and Peter Wood at The Federalist.
At Physics Today, physicist Richard Muller says that the flow of time is not an illusion.Psychology Today interviews philosopher Susan Haack.

A Christian’s job interview, with comedian Tracey Ullman.
Computer scientist and conservative thinker David Gelernter interviewed at The Atlantic.
At the Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum, a Q&A with philosopher Rondo Keele, author of Ockham Explained.
Science fiction meets Aristotelian causality.  The latest from Michael Flynn, in the March/April issue of Analog.  Reviewed here.
At The New York Times, conservative philosopher Roger Scruton on human nature.  Scruton’s new book on the subject is reviewed by James Ryerson.   And at The New Criterion, Scruton on populism.
Interview with Fr. Thomas Joseph White about the second edition of his book Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology.
Uh oh.  Early reviews indicate that with the Netflix series Iron Fist, Marvel’s finally blown it.
At Catholic World Report, philosopher Joseph Trabbic on Vatican II and the Catholic state.  And at Public Discourse, Trabbic defends Plato’s Republic.
YouTube video of philosophers John Searle and Luciano Floridi discussing artificial intelligence.
Conrad Black on Judge Richard Posner, in The New Criterion.
As any mu major dude would tell you, if there were such a thing as a greatest Steely Dan song ever, this might be it.  The making of “Deacon Blues.”  Then there’s Anthony Robustelli’s new book Steely Dan FAQ .
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Logic, edited by Catarina Dutilh Novaes and Stephen Read’s, is reviewed at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Turns out right-wingers are better looking than left-wingers.  Hey, it’s science.
Give ‘em an F.  Moronic university students demand the exclusion of Plato and Aristotle from the curriculum.
At the New York Review of Books, physicist Steven Weinberg on the trouble with quantum mechanics.
On the heels of the excellent Man in the High Castle: Amazon will be streaming a Philip K. Dick anthology series.
Also at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Steven Jensen reviews Riccardo Saccenti’s Debating Medieval Natural Law and Paul Symington reviews Anthony Lisska’s Aquinas's Theory of Perception.
One more from The New Criterion: The career of Vatican Latinist Reginald Foster.
Trabbic on Trump and the travel ban, also at Public Discourse.
Better bring a bathrobe.  The Independent on the hotel room without walls. 
Two more from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: a review of Timothy Pawl’s In Defense of Conciliar Christology and a review of Brian Davies’ Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles: A Guide and Commentary.
You be willin’.  Philosopher Alfred Mele defends free will.
A “disastrous papacy,” concludes Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture.  A Church “in de facto schism,” judges E. Christian Brugger at Public Discourse.  A “full-blown civil war over doctrine,” says Dan Hitchens at the Catholic Herald.  Even progressive theologian Fr. Timothy Radcliffe urges the pope to engage the dubia.  At First Things, Fr. John Hunwicke reminds us of why we have popes in the first place, and Matthew Schmitz awaits a young one.

Supervenience on the hands of an angry God

In his book Physicalism, or Something Near Enough , Jaegwon Kim puts forward the following characterization of the materialist supervenience thesis:
I take supervenience as an ontological thesis involving the idea of dependence – a sense of dependence that justifies saying that a mental property is instantiated in a given organism at a time because, or in virtue of the fact that, one of its physical “base” properties is instantiated by the organism at that time.  Supervenience, therefore, is not a mere claim of covariation between mental and physical properties; it includes a claim of existential dependence of the mental on the physical. (p. 34)Kim goes on to deploy this thesis as a component of his influential “causal exclusion argument,” which is directed against non-reductive physicalists who accept supervenience but deny that the mental can be identified with the physical, and who also reject the epiphenomenalist claim that the mental has no causal efficacy.  In Kim’s view these theses cannot all be held together.  The basic idea is that if (a) every mental event supervenes on a physical event, (b) every physical event has a physical cause sufficient to produce it (the “closure” thesis), and (c) no event has more than one sufficient cause (the “exclusion” thesis), then it seems that there is nothing for the distinctively mental attributes of any event to do.  Hence the physicalist either has to embrace epiphenomenalism or, to save the causal efficacy of the mental, accept the reductionist thesis that mental properties are not merely supervenient upon, but identical to, physical properties.  (Kim spells out the argument more carefully and at greater length both in the book and in other writings.)

What concerns me in this post, however, is not the mind-body problem but rather an interesting and perhaps unexpected parallel Kim draws with some views on the nature of divine causation put forward by theologian Jonathan Edwards (of “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” fame).  Edwards took the occasionalist position that God is the only true efficient cause of everything that occurs, so that the apparent causal efficacy of everyday objects is illusory.  In a passage quoted by Kim in Physicalism, Edwards compares this purported illusion with the illusion that mirror images have causal efficacy: 

The imagesof things in a glass, as we keep our eye upon them, seem to remain precisely the same, with a continuing, perfect identity.  But it is known to be otherwise.  Philosophers well know that these images are constantly renewed, by the impression and reflection of new rays of light; so that the image impressed by the former rays is constantly vanishing, and a new image impressed by new rays every moment, both on the glass and on the eye…  And the new images being put on immediatelyor instantly do not make them the same, any more than if it were done with the intermission of an hour or a day.  The image that exists at this moment is not at all derived from the image which existed at the last preceding moment.  As may be seen, because if the succession of new rays be intercepted, by something interposed between the object and the glass, the image immediately ceases; the past existence of the image has no influence to uphold it, so much as for a moment.  (Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, Part IV, Chapter II)
The idea here is this.  It might seem like the mirror image of an object at time t1 is what causes the subsequent mirror image of the same object at time t2.  But that is not the case, and in fact the image at t1 does not cause anything.  Rather, it is the object itself which causes both the image at t1and the image at t2.  Now, in a similar way, it seems that (say) the movement of one billiard ball on a pool table causes the movement of a second billiard ball a moment later.  But that (claim occasionalists like Edwards) is also an illusion.  It is rather God who causes both the movement of the first ball and the movement of the second, and the first billiard ball has no more efficacy than the mirror image.  There are also no persisting objects (including the billiard balls) but rather a succession of fleeting objects created successively by God, which only appear to constitute persisting things in the way that the image in the mirror falsely appears to be one thing persisting over time.
There is, as Kim indicates, an interesting implicit parallel here to Kim’s causal exclusion argument (though Kim himself doesn’t explicitly draw out all of these parallels).  You could read Edwards as presenting a challenge to his fellow theists that is analogous to Kim’s challenge to his fellow physicalists.  Just as Kim begins with the fact that both he and other physicalists accept the supervenience of the mental on the physical, Edwards begins with the fact that theists affirm the supervenience of all things on God – that is to say, they affirm the doctrine of divine conservation, according to which the world could not persist in being even for an instant unless God were continually causing it to exist. 
And just as Kim’s argument could be deployed as a defense of epiphenomenalism – the thesis that mental attributes don’t really have any causal efficacy, but only falsely appear to – so too Edwards’ argument is a defense of occasionalism – the thesis that ordinary objects don’t really have any causal efficacy, but only falsely appear to.  An epiphenomenalist inspired by Kim would say: “If the mental supervenes on the physical, then (given certain further premises) the physical does everything and there’s really nothing for the mental to do.”  And Edwards is basically saying: “If ordinary objects supervene on God, then (given certain further premises) God does everything and there’s really nothing for ordinary objects to do.”
Now, there is the difference that Kim’s position is actually framed as a dilemma, whereas Edwards’ is not.  Kim is saying that the physicalist either has to opt for epiphenomenalism or opt for a reductionist identification of the mental with the physical.  A strictly parallel Edwardsian argument would pose a dilemma according to which the theist either has to opt for occasionalism or opt for a reductionist identification of ordinary objects with God.  The latter option would really amount to a kind of pantheism on which ordinary objects just are God perceived under different aspects.  To perceive one billiard ball hitting another is really just to perceive God acting under one aspect, to perceive the sun melting an ice cube is really just to perceive God acting under another aspect, and so on.
Then again, it is not clear in either case that the horns of the dilemma are really all that different.  Start with the mental-physical case.  Even on the reductionist horn of Kim’s dilemma, the mental arguably has no more efficacy than it does on the epiphenomenalist horn.  For example, even if the reductionist physicalist identifies the belief that it is raining with a certain brain process, it is very hard for the physicalist to avoid the conclusion that it is still the neurophysiological properties of that brain process, and not its intentional content, that end up doing all the causal work.  The distinctively mental attributes of a mental state are either made epiphenomenal after all or implicitly eliminated. 
From a Thomistic point of view, this is exactly what we should expect given the Scholastic metaphysical principle agere sequitur esse or “action follows being” – the thesis that the way a thing acts reflects the manner in which it exists.  If a thing does not really doanything at all, then neither can it truly be said to be real. 
It is for this reason that some Thomists argue that occasionalism collapses into pantheism, so that the occasionalist and pantheist horns of the dilemma that Edwards’ position might seem to generate also end up not being very different.  Hence, just as Kim’s position arguably leads to the implicit elimination of the mental, Edwards’ position arguably leads (whatever his intentions) to the elimination of everyday objects and the conclusion that God alone is real.
Be that as it may, does Edwards really show that divine conservation entails occasionalism (whether or not it also entails pantheism)?  No.  Note that Kim’s dilemma follows not from supervenience by itself, but only from supervenience together with his additional assumptions about causation (the closure and exclusion theses).  Similarly, Edwards’ conclusion would follow from divine conservation only if we were to accept certain explicit or implicit further assumptions that he is making about causation.  And Thomists would not accept those assumptions.
This turns out to be example #1,234 of how the acceptance or rejection of the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) analysis of causation has a ripple effect across the philosophical and theological landscape.  Edwards thinks that the relation of an object at t1 and the same object at t2 is like the relationship between the mirror image at t1 and the mirror image at t2, and that what is in question in each case is whether the first bears a relationship of efficient causality to the second.  Just as the mirror image at t1 is not the efficient cause of the mirror image at t2, so too the object at t1 is not (so the argument seems to go) the efficient cause of the object at t2.  (Here, by the way, I am interpreting Edwards’ position the way Kim does, or at least the way Kim’s use of him suggests.  I am not doing Edwards exegesis, and I don’t think Kim is claiming to do so either, but merely examining a view that one couldderive from his text.)
But this is at best a highly misleading way of characterizing the situation.  It is true that there can be no question of efficient causation between two objects here, but that is the case not because of some parallel with the mirror example, but rather for the simple reason that there aren’t two objects in the first place, but only one object, albeit one that exists at both times.  Perhaps Edwards is thinking (as many contemporary philosophers would) in terms of a causal relationship between distinct events at t1 and at t2, or between distinct temporal parts at those two times.  But we A-T philosophers would say that there are no such things as temporal parts, and that it is things rather than events that are in the strict sense efficient causes. 
So, even if we allow that the mirror images at t1 and t2 are distinct things of which we may ask whether or not they are related by efficient causation, it is just a muddle to think that a physicalobject at t1 and t2amounts to distinct things of which we may ask the same question.  The analogy between mirror images and physical objects is simply not a good one, so that it isn’t clear why we should take it to support an occasionalist conclusion.
To be sure, there is a sense in which it might be said that there is a kind of causal relation between an object at t1and the same object at t2.  But it has to do, not with efficient causation, but rather with formal and material causation.  The objects at t1 and t2 are the same object, not because something at t1 serves as an efficient cause of something at t2, but rather because it is the same composite of prime matter and substantial form at both times.  It is only if we try to reduce all causation to the efficient kind that it will seem that we need to understand an object’s persistence over time in terms of efficient causation, and then conjure something like events or temporal parts to serve as the purported relata.  And it is only once we have done that that we will be led to make the further mistake of thinking that there is some interesting analogy here with the mirror images, so that we start pondering (as the occasionalist does) whether to keep the purported relata while dropping the efficient-causal relation between them.
Another problem is that the Kim-style argument for occasionalism that Kim seems to be attributing to Edwards seems to presuppose that when we speak of divine causation and of efficient causation between physical objects, we are speaking univocally.  And for the Thomist that is simply not the case.  For one thing, where divine conservation and concurrence are concerned, God’s causality is of a primary or underived kind, whereas the causality of physical things is of a secondary or derivative kind.  For another thing, we are in all cases applying the concept of efficient causation to God in an analogical way, since the sort of causal circumstances that apply to physical objects (spatial contiguity, transfer of energy, etc.) cannot intelligibly apply to that which is immaterial, atemporal, absolutely simple, etc. 
The upshot is that divine causation and the causation that physical objects exhibit are simply not in competition with one another, the way that an occasionalist application of the exclusion principle requires that they be.  To suppose they are in competition is like supposing that I cannot see the geometry book in front of me and at the same time see that the Pythagorean theorem is true, on the grounds that the Pythagorean theorem is not located where the book is and thus is not in my line of sight.  The fallacy here is that the word “see” is not being used in the same, univocal sense in both claims, but rather in analogical senses.  I don’t see the theorem in the same sense in which I see the book, even though I really do see both.  
It is similarly fallacious to suppose that if God is the ultimate cause on which the activity of billiard balls, the sun, etc. supervenes, then there is nothing left for them to do.  For physical objects do not cause things in the same, univocal sense in which God does, but rather in an analogical sense.  It is true both that God causes the second billiard ball to move and that the first billiard ball causes it to move, without any competition, redundancy, or overdetermination, because they are “causing” it in different senses.  (For the same reason, it is no less fallacious to suppose that if the physical objects have real causal efficacy, then there is nothing left for God to do – an atheist rather than occasionalist error.  But that is another issue.)
Related posts:
Aristotle’s four causes versus pantheism
Causality, pantheism, and deism
Metaphysical middle man
Are you for real?

How to be a pervert

We’ve been talking of late about “perverted faculty arguments,” which deploy the concept of perversion in a specific, technical sense.  The perversion of a human faculty essentially involves both using the faculty but doing so in a way that is positively contrary to its natural end.  As I’ve explained before, simply to refrain from using a faculty at all is not to pervert it.  Using a faculty for something that is merely other than its natural end is also not to pervert it.  Hence, suppose faculty F exists for the sake of end E.  There is nothing perverse about not using F at all, and there is nothing perverse about using F but for the sake of some other end G.  What isperverse is using F but in a way that actively prevents E from being realized.  It is this contrariness to the very point of the faculty, this outright frustration of its function, that is the heart of the perversity.  (See the paper linked to above for exposition, defense, and application of the idea.)Perversion, in this sense, is arguably analogous to performative self-contradiction.  (I do not say that it is exactly the same thing as that, but only that there is an analogy.)  Consider first the general notion of a self-contradiction, before turning to the performative kind.  The idea of a round square is self-contradictory, because being round and being square mutually exclude one another.  It’s as if, in trying to make a round square, you would be putting something out with your right hand while at the same time taking it back with your left.  Or it’s as if you would be attempting to create something while at the very same time annihilating it.  A round square is a self-undermining kind of thing, its roundness and squareness mutually subverting or frustrating each other’s very existence.

This is loose talk, of course, since round squares, being non-existent, cannot do anything, including frustrating or subverting themselves.  But performative self-contradictions involve things that do exist, namely people.  Suppose you utter the words “I am not uttering any words.”  The very act of making the statement falsifies it.  The statement gives with one hand what the act takes back with the other.  Or, you might say that the statement points in one direction while the making of it points simultaneously in the opposite direction. 
Perverting a faculty is somewhat like this.  A faculty F is of its nature directed toward end E and in perverting it one directs the faculty instead away from E.  With one hand, as it were, one gives E – just by virtue of using F, which inherently points toward E – while with the other hand one takes E away.  The faculty’s natural function is at odds with your use of it, just as the act of speaking is in the example above at odds with the words being spoken, and just as being square is at odds with being round.
Now, a self-contradictory concept effectively nullifies the being of the thing the concept is a concept of.  Being round nullifies being square, so that a round square cannot even “get off the ground” ontologically, as it were. 
A performative self-contradiction effectively nullifies the truth of the statement made by a speaker.  In our example, the very act of speaking the sentence “I am not uttering any words” falsifies the words being spoken.
The perversion of a faculty effectively nullifies the goodness of the action being performed.  The good use of a faculty must be consistent with its natural end, and the perverse user of the faculty actively prevents that end.  Hence the good use of our communicative faculties is inconsistent with lying, which is contrary to their truth-conveying end; the good use of our sexual faculties must be consistent with their procreative and unitive ends; and so forth.
Being, truth, and goodness are, of course, transcendentalsand thus convertible – the same thing looked at from different points of view.  We might expect, then, that just as there are self-defeating kinds of would-be entities (e.g. round squares) and self-defeating kinds of utterances (performative self-contradictions), there would also be self-defeating kinds of action.  That is, I propose, what the perversion of a faculty amounts to. 
The perversity of frustrating a faculty is arguably also analogous to the irrationalityof self-contradictory thought.  Indeed, we could just as well switch the descriptions: There is a kind of perversity to self-contradictory thinking, and there is a kind of inherent irrationality to the perversion of a faculty.  Rational action is always and necessarily good action (again, see the natural law analysis in the paper linked to above) and the perversion of a faculty involves acting contrary to the good. 
Note that these (tentative and sketchy) remarks are not intended as an argument for the wrongness of perverting a faculty.  The argument for that conclusion is presented in the paper linked to above, and nothing in that paper depends on anything I say in this blog post.  But it does seem to me that the nature of perversity is illuminated by the analogy with self-contradiction. 

Mired in the roiling tar pits of lust

As I note in my essay on the perverted faculty argument, not all deliberate frustrations of a natural faculty are gravely immoral.  For example, lying involves the frustration of a natural faculty and thus is wrong, but it is usually only venially sinful.  So what makes the perversion of a faculty seriously wrong?  In particular, why have traditional natural law theorists and Catholic moral theologians regarded the perversion of our sexual faculties as seriously wrong?  (The discussion that follows presupposes that you’ve read the essay just referred to – please don’t waste time raising objections in the combox unless you’ve done so.)In a post from a couple of years ago I discussed three aspects of sex which give it a unique moral significance: it is the means by which new people are made; it is the means by which we are completed qua men and women; and it is the area of life in which the animal side of our nature most relentlessly struggles against the rational side.  In a follow-up post I elaborated upon this last point, spelling out Aquinas’s account of the deleterious effects of sexual vice on the intellect and the will.

The nature of sexual pleasure featured prominently in that account, and it is key to understanding why natural law theorists and moral theologians regard the perversion of our sexual faculties as an inherently serious matter.  For sexual pleasure is dangerous stuff.  That is by no means to say that it is bad; on the contrary, it is very good.  Rather, it is dangerous in the way that alcohol, or gasoline, or knives, or many other perfectly innocent everyday things are dangerous.  There is nothing wrong with enjoying it, any more than there is anything wrong with using these other things.  But as with these other things, you need to be careful with it and indulge in it only at the right time and in the right way.
The source of the danger is its uniquely intense and enthralling character.  Aquinas describes lust, by which he means disordered sexual desire, as concerned with “the greatest of pleasures… [which] absorb the mind more than any others” (Summa Theologiae II-II.46.3).  Now, sexual pleasure needs to be very intense and absorbing if sex is to fulfill its procreative and unitive ends.  Sex is fundamentally about other people.  In particular, it is about the new people you bring into being by way of sex, and it is about the person with whom you bring those new people into being.  In the nature of the case, these are people you need to be on intimate terms with for a long time, sharing a household with them and taking responsibility for them.  That is demanding and difficult, and thus something which, all things being equal, we would naturally seek to avoid.
The reason most people don’t avoid it is, of course, because of the very strong allure of sex.  A person becomes sexually attracted to another person, the couple’s sexual relations are extremely pleasant and tend to foster strong affection between them, and the children that result from these relations thereby have both a mother and a father to provide for them materially and spiritually.  Needless to say, this basic pattern is very common in everyday human life.  Equally needless to say, it also very often does not go nearly as tidily as that little summary implies.  People have fleeting sexual relationships too, they contracept or abort, they get bored and divorce, and so on.  The point, though, is that the many child-producing and stable monogamous relationships that do occur wouldn’t occur very often or at all if it weren’t for the strong allure of sex, which gets the whole process going and to some extent keeps it going.
The delight we take in sexual relations is intended by nature to function as a kind of emotional superglue.  Sexual desire is meant to direct people out of themselves and their personal interests and to seek completion in another person, and sexual pleasure is meant to bond a person tightly with that other person once he or she is found.  Like literal superglue, it doesn’t always succeed, but this binding function is still its point, its final cause.  And like literal superglue, if it gets applied in the wrong way there will be serious problems.  It will “bond” you to the wrong thing or at the wrong time (where what counts as “wrong” according to natural law theory is spelled out in the essay on the perverted faculty argument linked to above). 
An obvious way in which this is so would be in the context of fornication or adultery.  The pleasure of sex will in these cases tend to enmesh one in situations that are not conducive to the well-being of the children that might result.  But the sexual faculties themselves are not necessarily perverted in these cases – the essential immorality of fornication and adultery derives from other considerations – to they are a bit tangential to our main interest here (though I’ll return to the topic of fornication later on).
A more relevant example would be masturbation, which has traditionally been considered immoral in many cultures but which modern Westerners typically regard as unproblematic (though interestingly, expressions like “jack-off” and “wanker” retain their force as terms of abuse, conveying the idea of something shameful and pathetic).  Why is this particular perversion of the faculty considered seriouslydisordered by natural law theory and Catholic moral theology?  What’s the big deal? 
The big deal is that masturbation essentially takes something that is intended by nature to be strongly other-oriented and makes of it something strongly self-orientedinstead.  Accordingly, it is about as “perverse” in the relevant sense – that is to say, in the sense of using a human faculty while at the same time actively frustrating its teleology – as an act could be.  (I’m only addressing the nature of the act itself here, by the way.  Culpability for the act, which concerns a person’s knowledge, maturity, psychological state, force of habit, etc. is, as all moral theologians emphasize, a trickier question, and I am not talking about that right now.)
Hence, suppose someone masturbates while fantasizing about people other than his or her spouse.  The pleasure experienced in that case will have a tendency to “glue” the person’s sexual inclinations to these objects of imagination, which makes it more difficult for them to be “glued” in the same way to the real flesh and blood spouse.  The person’s sexual thoughts and feelings will to some extent become habitually “directed toward” fantasy partners rather than the spouse. 
Or suppose that someone masturbates while fantasizing about some sexual act which is for independent reasons immoral.  The pleasure experienced in that case will have a tendency to “glue” the person’s sexual sensibilities to that sort of act, which will make it more difficult for him to find pleasure in morally licit sexual acts.  His sexual thoughts and feelings will become habitually “directed toward” these illicit acts as much as or more than toward licit acts. 
Then there is the fact that in an interpersonal context, lovers have to adjust their needs and expectations to one another.  For example, a more adventurous or amorous person will have to moderate his desires somewhat, whereas a more conservative or reserved person will have to loosen up a bit.  In this and other ways, the partners will, when things go well, find a happy medium and complement one another.  But masturbation in which a person fantasizes about people or circumstances which do not put such limits on one’s desires will tend to have the opposite effect.  It will make it much more difficult for the person to tolerate the real world conditions that would otherwise mold his desires in a more realistic direction.  As C. S. Lewis once put the point in a letter to a reader:
[T]he real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another… and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.  And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.  For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival.  Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity.
End quote.  Modern pornography greatly exacerbates the problem, in two respects.  First, insofar as it involves images of real people doing real things, it intensifies the vividness of onanistic sexual fantasy and the sexual pleasure experienced in it.  Second, the variety of sexual acts displayed, the bodily perfection of the performers, the promiscuity they exhibit, etc. further disconnect fantasy from what real partners are likely to want or expect sexually.  The user thus becomes more firmly “glued” onto unrealistic expectations, illicit sexual acts, etc., and thus less capable of finding satisfaction in a normal sexual relationship with a real person.    
Furthermore, the more that taking sexual pleasure in unrealistic and illicit fantasy objects rather than in a real person becomes “second nature,” the more likely a person is to lose even an understanding of – let alone a desire for – what really is natural (in the natural law theory sense of “natural”) where sex is concerned.  Natural feelings of revulsion at certain illicit acts will weaken, as will the desire and capacity for thinking objectively about the morality of acts that one has come to be strongly attracted to.  As sociologist Mark Regnerus has suggested, contemporary pornography, which is historically unprecedented in its prevalence and in the extremeness of its content, has plausibly played a key role in the liberalization of attitudes about sexual morality. 
This is an instance of what Aquinas calls “blindness of mind,” which on his account is one of the byproducts of sexual vice and which I discussed in an earlier post.  Our “pornified”popular culture, which is hypersexualized even apart from outright pornography, has made of this particular kind of “blindness” a mass phenomenon.  Millions upon millions of human beings have in effect become psychologically “glued” to sexual attitudes and behaviors of a greater or lesser degree of immorality.  Modern Western society is like Plato’s Cave, only with lewd images rather than flickering shadows endlessly playing across the walls.  Or to change metaphors, it is like a vast herd of Pleistocene fauna mired in tar pits of disordered sexual pleasure.
This mass blindness in turn facilitates other kinds of grave sexual immorality – which brings us back to fornication.  Millions of children today are trapped in poverty because of illegitimacy.  Millions more are aborted.  In short, widespread fornication leads to lots of poor children and lots of dead children.  Neither poverty nor abortion would be nearly as common as they are if fornication and the hypersexualized pop culture that facilitates it were stigmatized the way they once were. 
Now, modern people are hardly reluctant to stigmatize things – cigarette smoking, politically incorrect language, etc.  They are also highly sentimental about children.  Yet they would never dream of stigmatizing fornication and oversexualized pop culture for the sake of the well-being of children.  Indeed, they are so attached to the stupid cliché that what one does in the bedroom has no effect on anyone else that they have great difficulty seeing what, for most human beings historically, has been blindingly obvious – that sexual immorality in fact has a massive effect precisely on these weakest members of society. 
Thus does sex, which has as its natural end the generation and rearing of children, now regularly lead by way of illegitimacy and abortion to the impoverishment and murderof children. 
Now that is perverse.  And it is testimony to the power of sexual pleasure to cause grave harm when not indulged in in the right way and at the right time. 
Not that there aren’t even worse consequences still – though they have to do with tar pits of the sort you’re more likely to see in Dante than at La Brea.

Foundations of sexual morality

The foundations of traditional sexual morality, like the foundations of all morality, are to be found in classical natural law theory.  I set out the basic lines of argument in my essay “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” which appears in my book Neo-Scholastic Essays .  The title notwithstanding, the perverted faculty argument is by no means the whole of the natural law understanding of sexual morality, but only a part.  It is an important and unjustly maligned part of it, however, as I show in the essay.  Along the way I criticize purported alternative approaches to defending traditional sexual morality, such as the so-called “New Natural Law Theory.”  Anyway, you can now read the essay online.  After you’ve done so, you might follow up with some other things I’ve written on the subject of sexual morality.

Science, computers, and Aristotle

If you think that the brain, or the genome, or the universe as a whole is a kind of computer, then you are really an Aristotelian whether you realize it or not.  For information, algorithms, software, and other computational notions can intelligibly be applied within physics, biology, and neuroscience only if an Aristotelian philosophy of nature is correct.  So I argue in my paper “From Aristotle to John Searle and Back Again: Formal Causes, Teleology, and Computation in Nature,” which appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of Nova et Vetera .  You can now read the paper online.

Immaterial thought and embodied cognition

In a combox remark on my recent post about James Ross’s argument for the immateriality of thought, reader Red raises an important set of issues:
Given embodied cognition, aren't these types of arguments from abstract concepts and Aristotelian metaphysics hugely undermined?  In their book Philosophy in the Flesh Lakoff and Johnson argue that abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.
End quote.  In fact, none of this undermines Ross’s argument at all, but I imagine other readers have had similar thoughts, and it is worthwhile addressing how these considerations do relate to the picture of the mind defended by Ross and by Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophers generally.Note first that metaphor doesn’t affect Ross’s point about the determinacy of thought in the slightest.  Recall that to say that a thought is “determinate” in the sense Ross, Quine, Kripke, et al. have in mind is to say that there is a fact of the matterabout whether it has one rather than another among a possible range of meanings.  To use Quine’s famous example, if I have the thought that gavagai, that thought will be determinate in the relevant sense if there is a fact of the matter about whether it has the content that there is a rabbit over there as opposed to the content that there is an undetached rabbit part over there or the content that there is a temporal stage of a rabbit over there.  Now, whether I am using gavagai metaphorically is irrelevant.  For example, suppose I am pointing to a human being as I have the thought.  If the thought has a determinate content, then there will be a fact of the matter about whether I am describing the person metaphorically as a rabbit, or as an undetached rabbit part, or as a temporal stage of a rabbit.  In short, to say that a linguistic utterance or thought is determinate in the relevant sense doesn’t entail that it is not metaphorical.

Second, though there is, accordingly, no need to get into a discussion of Lakoff and Johnson’s claims about metaphor in order to defend Ross, it should be noted briefly that it would be a serious mistake to suppose that anyone who endorses Ross’s claim that a linguistic utterance or thought can have a determinate meaning must be committed to a simplistic account of language that ignores the rich and complex ways that the meanings of words can be extended.  On the contrary, the crucial role that the analogical use of language plays in human thought is a longstanding theme in Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, and Ross himself wrote an important book on the subject.  Moreover, to suppose that we have to regard a concept either as having a straightforward literal meaning or as metaphorical is to assume a false dichotomy.  Not all analogy is metaphor, so that a concept can have an analogical but still literal meaning.  (See pp. 256-63 of Scholastic Metaphysics for a brief overview of the Thomistic approach to this subject.)
Third, Ross and other Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophers would by no means deny that human cognition is embodied.  On the contrary, Aristotelians and Thomists have always insisted that embodiment is natural to us and to our mode of cognition.  They do not regard a human being as a res cogitans or the body as something to which the human mind is only contingently attached (as Cartesian dualism implies) much less as a kind of prison (as Platonism holds).  Rather, on the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, a human being is a substance to which both incorporeal and corporeal operations are essential, and the incorporeal ones (intellectual and volitional activity) require certain corporeal ones (namely sensation and imagination) as their natural concomitant.  That is why the title of the article in which Ross first presented his argument is “Immaterial Aspects of Thought,” and the title of my article developing and defending the argument is “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought.”  And that is also why, though the intellect is incorporeal and thus survives the destruction of the body, it cannot do much on its own.  Death is not a liberation, but (as I have put it elsewhere) something like a “full body amputation” that leaves the human being reduced to an incorporeal stub.  (See the posts linked to below for further discussion.)
However, there is a special way in which contemporary thinking about embodied cognition might seem at odds with Ross’s argument.  The idea of embodied cognition has in recent years been closely connected with the notion of tacit knowledgeexplored by mid twentieth-century thinkers like Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ryle, Polanyi, and Hayek, and developed further by more recent writers like John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus, and Charles Taylor.  One way to sum up the basic idea is that all conscious and explicit knowing thatsuch-and-such is the case presupposes a background of inexplicit knowing how to cope with the world, where knowing how is a matter of having certain capacities, dispositions, and ways of acting rather than a matter of grasping propositions.  These capacities, dispositions, and ways of acting are in turn largely bodily capacities, dispositions, and ways of acting, so that all of our explicit propositional knowledge ultimately presupposes embodiment.
Now, I have long been highly sympathetic to this line of thought, and have discussed Hayek’s application of it in a few places (here, here, and here).  In fact it represents, I would argue, a rediscovery of an essentially Aristotelian conception of human nature.  (This is a theme I develop in some forthcoming work.)  But it might seem hard to square with Ross.  One of the central theses of writers on tacit knowledge is that it can never in principle all be made explicit.  Even when we make explicit some piece of knowledge that had been inexplicit or tacit, there is always some further body of knowledge that remains inexplicit and exists in the form of dispositions and habits of action rather than propositions.  As Polanyi liked to put it, “we know more than we can tell.”  Conscious and explicit knowledge is like the tip of an iceberg, and no matter how much of the iceberg you bring up above the surface, there is always more that is left underwater. 
Now, if we have knowledge that is never explicit but rather embodied in habits and dispositions, then doesn’t that entail that it is not determinate in the relevant sense, especially insofar as it is embodied and thus sunk in materiality?  And doesn’t that conflict with what Ross says?
It does not conflict with it at all.  For one thing, the precise sense in which inexplicit knowledge of the sort in question might be said to be indeterminate needs careful spelling out.  And it is not clear that it really is indeterminate in the relevant sense.  Suppose you have the thought that it is raining, and when it is raining, traffic is bad, and from that thought draw the conclusion that traffic is bad.  You have reasoned according to the inference rule modus ponens, but suppose you do not realize this because you have never taken a logic class and it has simply never occurred to you to consider that form of reasoning in the abstract, apart from the concrete examples in which you have deployed it.  We might say that your knowledge of modus ponens is in this case tacit or inexplicit, embodied in certain habits or dispositions of thinking and speaking rather than as a proposition or rule you have ever consciously entertained. 
Now suppose you take a logic class and explicitly learn the rule.  You think “Hmm, I’ve always reasoned that way, though I never before really thought about the fact that that is what I was doing.”  You now certainly have a thought with determinate content.  But if what you grasp now is something you recognize as a rule you had always applied in the past, it is hard to see how what you knew in the past, inexplicitly or tacitly, was any less determinate in its content in the relevant sense than is the thought you have now.  It always was the determinate rule modus ponensthat you were applying, even if you weren’t aware of it.  The determinacy of the immaterial intellect arguably seeps down, as it were, into the body, so as to make determinate even tacit knowledge.
But put that aside, because there is a deeper point.  Ross never says in the first place that every single thought we ever have is entirely determinate in its content in the relevant sense, and he doesn’t need to say that in order to make his argument.  All he needs is the premise that some thought is determinate in its content.  So, even if we were to concede that inexplicit or tacit knowledge is indeterminate, that would not affect Ross’s argument, because all he needs is the claim that some of our explicit thought is determinate in its content.
This objection to Ross would also seem once again betray a failure to understand the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of human nature and how it differs from other conceptions.  If a human being were an angel or a Cartesian res cogitans, then perhaps we would be able to say that everything we know we know explicitly and that all of our mental states and processes are entirely determinate in their content in the relevant sense.  If a human being were entirely corporeal, as a non-human animal is, then we would be devoid of strictly intellectual activity and thus it could be said that everything we know we know only tacitly or inexplicitly and that none of our mental states and processes (i.e. sub-intellectual exercises in perception and imagination) has any determinate conceptual content in the relevant sense.  But neither of these scenarios holds.  In fact, human beings straddle the divide between the purely incorporeal and the purely corporeal, having one foot in the angelic realm and one foot in the animal realm.  Hence we are mixtures of the determinate and indeterminate, the explicit and the tacit.  And that we have at least some determinate mental content is all Ross needs for his argument.
FURTHER READING:
What is a soul?
Some questions on the soul, Part I
Some questions on the soul, Part II
Was Aquinas a dualist?
Was Aquinas a materialist?
So, what are you doing after your funeral?
Mind-body interaction: What’s the problem?
Progressive dematerialization